


Of Things We Should Forget

by rowofstars



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Cursed AU, F/M, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Post-Episode: s01e12 Skin Deep, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-16
Updated: 2012-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-24 11:32:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6152308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowofstars/pseuds/rowofstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A post-Skin Deep fic for what might have been and what could have been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Things We Should Forget

**Author's Note:**

> Original note from LJ: Holy shit. I ship it and I ship it hard! Beauty and the Beast!!!!
> 
> Oh my god. If I had only known then. So this is my literal first Rumbelle fic, though it wasn't called Rumbelle at the time. I posted it on LJ 4 days after Skin Deep aired, but the OUAT fandom on LJ at that time was minimal and more focused on Gremma and Emma/August and Snowing. I never thought to actually bring it over because it's so old and so different from most of what I write now, that it feels weird. Looking at my old fic is a trip, man.

She remembers smells, woodsmoke and dust, old paper and lavender in the spring, but not her name.

Underneath her is nothing but a slab and a thin sheet. She is cold, always cold, but somehow the cold is familiar just like the the hazy memory of winter and long windows and velvet curtains. There are no such things here. The only window is small and high, barred even though she’d need three of her to reach it. It’s too high to see out of but the light, _oh_ the light! It streams in from outside, from the world that forgot her and passes her by. Leaning against the wall she swears she can feel the sunlight on her face. It calls to her, begs her to come back into it.

There was a man once. A man who didn’t believed he was. But she believed. She believed and loved and lost. Somehow she knows this, feels it in her bones. He is out there and he will come for her if he knows where to look. Just once she screamed. For him, maybe. In vain, surely.

She screamed until her throat was raw, clawed at the door, the walls, herself. She raged when they came for her, and fought until the sting and the blackness overcame her senses. The lines on her arms remind.

There’s a noise in the hallway then, and a face covers the narrow pane of glass in the door.

The woman, again, with the fierce eyes and cruel smile. It’s momentary, but enough, and she shivers.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Mr. Gold does not know he is lost.

If you ask him, he will certainly know _where_ he is, _when_ he is, _what_ he is. He will know that he lives in a pink Victorian house on Bluebelle Lane and has for some number of years. He will know that he opens his shop every day at eight and that rent day is the third Thursday of the month. He will know that he takes his tea with what some might call _too much_ sugar. This is the only truth.

Every morning at six thirty, he wakes. He showers, he shaves, he makes breakfast. Two eggs, over easy, and toast. He will tell you it’s because he likes it, or because he is very set in his ways and likes his routine. But he does not know why he stops every morning and looks out the back door into the garden at the rose bush. He does not know why the bloody, cursed thing won’t bloom like it used to, why it only ever seems to produce three or four flowers while the rest of it lies a twisted mess of thorns and green leaves. It’s the only plant in the garden that defies him, and perhaps the only thing in town, besides Regina, that dares.

He remembers a woman with brown hair and blue eyes and a smile that rivaled the sun. He remembers basking in her beauty for a time. But time takes all things from the deserving and undeserving, and he is most certainly the latter. He does not remember her name, only the rosy pink of her lips and the weight of her in his arms.

He blinks in the glare of the sun and frowns, then turns to leave.

Regina breaks her wrist in a Miner’s Day event, and it’s a stupid, petty thing, but he just has to gloat a little bit. 

The hospital smells annoyingly sterile with a sick bleachy smell that always makes him curl his lip. As he makes his way over to where she’s sitting with Dr. Whale, he hears something. It’s almost nothing, a shout maybe, but the voice nags at him. It’s something he should be able to place and can’t, and suddenly whatever snark he had for the mayor is forgotten.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Some time later, Gold stands at the door to his shop, key in hand, and looks across the street.

The library is no longer boarded up and he almost smiles. In the wide front window he can see the new librarian in her sunny yellow dress. She walks back and forth, carrying books from a cart and setting them on the once dusty shelves. As she turns her skirt flutters and so does his heart.

He frowns.

Miss French is barely an acquaintance. He’s not even sure he’s even heard her first name, but he knows she’s Moe’s daughter, the poor dear. Apparently she spent some time in the asylum, didn’t take the death of her mother well or some such. Might have tried to kill herself, so the rumors say.

Tragic for such a lovely, young thing.

He swallows as she looks up and catches his eyes. Then she smiles and waves, and he turns and hurries inside his shop. He knows her smile has fallen, can feel it and the lost look in her eyes on his back. It doesn’t matter, but it does, and all day he will feel like there’s something he’s supposed to remember. There is a weight to memories, both known and not, perhaps his more than most.

He will sit alone in his study and sip expensive whiskey until he has forgotten the shine of her hair and daintiness of her fingers.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It’s the light in the library she likes the best.

When the sun streams in the front windows, warming the chairs in the little sitting area, there is something that stirs in her. The smells of books and dust is familiar, but it lacks something, something important that’s always just out of her reach.

Mr. Gold would understand.

She doesn’t know how she knows this, but every day he looks across the street as he opens his shop. Every day she waves. Every day he looks away.

Every day she is still lost.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Just once, on a spring afternoon, he thinks about bringing her tea.

She likes it with honey. He knows this like he knows his favorite color is blue.

He doesn’t know why that’s important.


End file.
